Pregame scuffle breaks out on EPA climate rule

President Barack Obama’s landmark climate rule for power plants is still days from its debut, but industry groups, environmentalists and the administration are already waging a war of words over the coal crackdown.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce grabbed headlines Wednesday with a study contending that the rule would drag down the economy, wiping out an average of $51 billion worth of output and 224,000 jobs a year. Dead wrong, the Natural Resources Defense Council responded — arguing that, to the contrary, “hundreds of thousands of jobs will be created and Americans will save billions of dollars on their electric bills.”

Text Size

-

+

reset

EPA jumped into the debate too, with a blog post accusing the Chamber of “using the same tired play from the same special interest playbook that is engineered to continue polluting and stall progress.” White House aide John Podesta chimed in on Twitter: “I’m old enough to know what a broken record actually sounds like. @USChamber wrong before, wrong again on pollution.”

Expect to hear a lot more of the same after Monday, when EPA is expected to release the centerpiece of Obama’s climate agenda, a long-awaited rule to limit carbon emissions from existing power plants.

What’s at stake is not just the rule itself but the way the issue will play out in the November elections, where coal-reliant states like Kentucky, West Virginia, Arkansas and Colorado are already offering a rough battleground for Democrats.

Groups and companies including the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the American Lung Association, Earthjustice, Advanced Energy Economy and Standard & Poor’s are also weighing in with statements, studies and other attempts to shape the debate about the rule. So is the National Mining Association, which earned four Pinocchios from a Washington Post fact-checker last week for airing radio ads in Virginia, Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Michigan and Pennsylvania claiming that wholesale electricity costs could rise 80 percent because of the new regulations.

All sides agree that the rule involves enormous stakes.

“I think it’ll be the single largest thing that the president will do on climate in eight years in one rule,” said Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune. In addition to cutting carbon emissions from power plants across the country, he said, “it will send a strong signal internationally that America’s serious on climate.”

But the chamber’s Institute for 21st Century Energy was firing the loudest salvos on Wednesday. Its study, conducted with the firm IHS, asserted that EPA’s upcoming rule plus a separate rule for future power plants will take a huge bite out of the economy through 2030.

“The impact won’t just hit coal, these regulations will affect every energy user, and that includes you,” institute President Karen Harbert wrote in a note to supporters Wednesday afternoon.